Company Pays Workers to Adopt Cats

This may sound like a dream to all cat lovers, but in Japan it is a reality. The IT Firm, Ferray encourages their employees to bring their cats to the office. If one of their workers decides to adopt a new four-legged friend, then that employee is given a bonus.

Hidenobu Fukuda, head of Ferray, told the Agency France-Presses that he gives “5,000 yen (about $45) a month to those who rescue a cat.” This has been an on-going tradition since 2000 when one of his employees asked to bring their feline to work. According to the Huffington Post, approximately “nine cats hang out in the office regularly.”

If you dreamed of looking inside of their office space, the company currently has a Twitter account. Their handle “@v_ume”, posts a plethora of adorable photos of the cats hanging out in the office. Fukuda believes that cats are a great stress reliever for his workers. Reported by the Huffington Post, there has been studies that have shown a person’s mood can increase while interacting with an animal. People hanging out with a pet have also felt a decreased sense of loneliness, decreased blood pressure, and cholesterol. Not to mention, listening to a purring cat can be highly stress relieving.

This may sound like a great idea for all work places, but having cats in the office does have some downfalls. Fukuda told the AFP that “the company has a slight problem with cats sometimes shutting down the computers by stepping on the switches.” Not to mention, we can only imagine the smell when all of the cats go to the bathroom.